The present disclosure relates generally to food technology. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for mitigating the temperature changes that occur during a transition from recirculating water to a food product during aseptic processing of the food product.
Methods of aseptically processing food products are well known. These methods, however, may not always provide optimal results for manufacturing efficiency and/or resulting product quality. For example, during aseptic processing, a food product is typically heated by water, which is heated by steam. Prior to processing of the food product, however, the system is chemically cleaned and rinsed with water. Water is then recirculated through the system to maintain sterility of the system. When the timing is appropriate to introduce the food product into the system, a product tank valve is opened and the initial water/food product interface begins to travel through the system. The interface, however, causes a sudden temperature drop in the system that can cause a loss of sterility of the product. In this regard, there is a temperature minimum that cannot be exceeded at the water/food product interface or the system is susceptible to a loss of sterility, which would result in the process being terminated and a repeat of the system sterilization procedures. Accordingly, loss of sterility can be a timely, inefficient and costly problem for aseptic processes.
Further, large changes in temperature (either losses or gains of temperature) can cause issues with product quality management. For example, if the water/food product interface experiences a large overshoot of temperature at any point during the processing, the food product may be “burnt” or degraded such that the quality of the food product is no longer acceptable. As with the loss of sterility described above, the process would be halted and the resulting product would be discarded. Accordingly, unacceptable product quality could also be a costly problem for such processes.
Therefore, there exists a need for a manufacturing process that is able to mitigate the temperature changes that can occur during aseptic processing of a food product.